Nothing Like Meeting Friends and Strangers

For those of you who aren't gaming geeks, feel free to skip on this post.

I haven't talked a lot about my World of Warcraft (WoW) involvement, despite the fact that I spend a lot of time with these people, despite the fact that a lot of them are "real life" friends who I see regularly. I don't know why. Maybe it's because it doesn't seem to fit in with the bloggy nature of most of the other cool bloggers I know.

In any case, I had a blast this past Saturday night with a group of people I play WoW with. Many of them were people I'd met before, but some of them came into town just to hang out with us, and that made for a great time for all.

I'll use real names and game names so that translation is possible for anyone who knows these people in-game, and so that it's readable for those who don't and try to struggle through this post anyway. Poor misguided souls.

Josh (Ataraxia) came into town on Saturday morning from Atlanta. We had agreed to a potluck dinner on Saturday night with Josh as main chef.  Our first order of business was to get Josh some real Texas barbecue, which we did at Rudy's.  I took a pic of Josh washing his hands in the Rudy's hand jacuzzi, but it was unfortunately out of focus.

We went back to the house, where Vic (Lucient) had shown up from Temple, about an hour away, and was waiting for us.  After hanging around the house and playing Rock Band 2 for a bit, we headed to get Vic and Josh some Tex-Mex. If you've been missing my food photography, you'll be very happy to see this next picture. Look, it's a plate full of cheese!

I understand there may be corn tortillas, meat sauce, rice and beans in there somewhere too, but mainly there's cheese on that plate. Trust me; I know. And this was after we ordered a large queso. This place has arguably the best queso in Austin (y'all can yell Taco Deli at me if you want; I'm gonna call it a tie).

The guys of course spent some time fidding with their phones, taking pics of the food and each other. I took a stealth photo of them while they were doing that. I'm sneaky like that. Vic is on the left; Josh is on the right. They both have great smiles and are a lot of fun to hang out with.

Next stop was the HEB (grocery store) where Josh and I stocked up on everything we'd need for the party.  As we checked out, Josh gave his approval to our mother lode of grocery goodness.

Now on to the party pics! Marc (DB) stopped by before the party started to drop off this amazing looking cake, which he called a Strawberry-Crown Trifle, or his three-hour cake.  Marc doesn't cook often, but he's an amazing cook when you can get him to do it.  The cake was, shall we say, highly alcoholic (the leftovers are making my fridge smell like a distillery even now), but it's all kinds of yummy. In this pic I'm on the left and Pat (Bliadd) is on the right. Apparently when Pat indulges in his own Mexican Martinis he earns the nickname of "Chatty Patty."  I worked with this man for 4+ years and have never heard him talk as much as he did that night.

Vic doesn't indulge in alcohol at all, but he did pose for us in a highly amusing manner. I couldn't resist posting this one!

This is Robert (Tyrinia) pretending to be a Rock Band guitarist. Don't let him fool you; he's playing on easy mode. I'm a fine one to talk since I can't get past medium myself, but I gotta call him out...

And this is Son the Older (Fedarden), who is a legendary Rock Band drummer, playing most songs on expert mode. Sick and wrong, I tell ya. Note the look of intense concentration. His shirt says, "HELLO! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." Josh hadn't seen the movie. We threatened to not let him go back to Atlanta until he'd done that bit of homework!

Here you can see Travis (Holyspit) on the left and Tai (Drakolan) on the right both blaming Josh for something. Why is it always the warlock's fault?

This is Karla (Pat's wife, who doesn't play WoW) and Pat.  How she survived the evening with all of us, I do not know. We had one other spouse, but she left early with their toddler, who had to go to bed. Karla hung in with us until the bitter end. Brave woman.

This is the aforementioned Marc (DB), who showed up again near the end of the party, having left to go to dinner with his uncle for his uncle's birthday in San Antonio. Marc is also a Rock Band legend on both drums and guitar, and he was kind enough to bring us his extra guitar for the party so more people could play. 

Last but certainly not least is our group pic (minus Marc, who came back too late to be included). I put numbers on people, but they're pretty hard to see; maybe you can make them out well enough. The key is below the pic.

1. Edward (Bizzarro) (who says he never smiles in pictures - HA!)

2. Tai (Drakolan)

3. Son the Older (Fedarden)

4. Pat (Bliadd)

5. Brad (Elfhorn)

6. Vic (Lucient)

7. Travis (Holyspit)

8. Josh (Ataraxia)

9. Lisa (Gnostica)

10. Robert (Tyrinia)

11. Becky (Findah)

Thanks everyone for coming. It was a great time. We'll have to do it again sometime!

Where Have You Been, Lisa?

What, have y'all been missing me?

Really? Aww, that's so sweet!

Well, I'm not participating this time around, but make sure you check out the Bloggy Giveaways carnival. Lots of great stuff there, as always.

Through an acquaintance on twitter, I found out about this sweet baby girl who is fighting for her life. Send prayers and good thoughts her way. Cute pics of her can be found here.

If you ever doubted the devastation that's taken place in Africa, this video is a little long, but WOW.

And for a little levity, or maybe just if you want something over the top to serve at your Super Bowl party, check this out.

Oh, you wanted to know what I've been up to? Oh, OK. Well, other than working and playing World of Warcraft, I've been trying to finish this little project for a baby shower on Sunday:


I don't know if I ever mentioned that I crochet, but I make baby afghans for friends. This one is for a friend I've had for 15 years or so. I'm SO excited about her baby girl. Her shower is Sunday. I went to three places on Saturday to find just the right yarn (she's a crocheter too and has opinions about such things), so I didn't get started until Sunday or so. One week to finish an afghan is pretty ambitious, and it's not really what I had in mind, but for Shell I'll do it. It's less than half done now, so I have a long way to go.

It's kind of hard to tell in the pic, but the blue is really more purple (her favorite color and mine), and the variegated white has pink and purple in it. I hope she and her baby girl love it!

In Which Lisa Talks About Everything, or Nothing

I really have a whole lotta nothing going on in my life, so here is today's ramble. Thanks for joining me in my crazy little world!

I got a free sample of soapnuts in my mailbox today from the fine folks at LaundryTree. I can't wait to try them! I will of course let y'all know how that works out. I've read about them and have been anxious to try them for myself, and the LaundryTree fairies (or Lisa at LaundryTree, who I love because she has an awesome first name and loves Austin) sent them to me. Yay!

Son the Older is coming home this weekend. This also makes me happy.

Son the Younger has found his niche in school: writing for the school newspaper. He loves it, and his teacher loves him and his writing. I'm so proud. *wipes away a tear*

My online game (World of Warcraft), which I haven't mentioned in forever, had a major overhaul on Tuesday, which made the sky come crashing down. Things are sort of working again now. They made players more powerful and the environment less powerful. It's like suddenly waking up as Hera (wife of Zeus, for those unfamiliar with Greek mythology). It's been fun to run through things that have been stopping us for months. Look: shiny!

See how twitter has ruined me for blogging? I can't even do a whole post on one topic anymore! Groooooooooooooan.

A Whole Lotta Nothing

That's what's been going on this weekend.

Yeah, we ate some food with friends. A lot of food with a lot of friends, in fact. It was good. They gave us some leftovers to take home. Those were yummy too.

Then we watched the aforementioned football game on Friday, plus a few others. Lots of good football on this weekend (unless you were from LSU).

And I played a lot of World of Warcraft (WoW). My guildmates and I went back and did a lot of "old school" stuff that we haven't done in months, just to blow stuff up that's way below our level and have a good time, instead of doing stuff that's really challenging, which is what we're usually doing. So we did Zul'Gurub, a 60-level raid, with an almost full group of mostly level 70 players, on Saturday, and today we did UBRS, another (much easier) 60-level raid with mostly 70s. Lots of laughter was had and friendships were built. We have several new people in the guild, so it's good to bond with them.

Everything in WoW costs gold -- money -- it's just like a "real" economy. The thing that costs the most money is called an epic flying mount. It's the very fastest way to get from place to place in the very large world. Lots of my guildmates have had their epic flying mounts for months. They're ridiculously fast. The usual way to travel long distances is to fly on the griff -- the hippogriff -- but these are just as fast, so you never have to pay for a griff flight again once you have your epic flying mount.

So we did a bunch of quests this weekend, my husband and I. He has three level 70 characters, one of which has its epic flying mount, and he's been on a mission for a while now to get up enough gold to get me mine. After all our questing and goofing off this weekend, we finally made it. And now I have my very own epic flying mount. If you care, you can see a picture of it here. If you know me, you won't be surprised to find I chose the purple one.

Now that I have nothing to spend my gold on, I guess I'll just go string some beads. =)

How Did it Get to Be Thursday?

Seriously... and I haven't posted since Monday!

Bad blogger! No donut!

Son the Younger was griping at me about my lack of posting yesterday. "Mother!" he said, in his most disapproving voice (which, if you have a teenage son, you know is highly disapproving), "you haven't posted in two days!"

Oh, the horror. Can you imagine such a thing?

So what was I off doing in my TWO DAYS of not posting? (I know it's three now. I'll get to that.)

On Monday night, Son the Older called from San Antonio, where he and the Mighty Marching Band were planning on competing in the state competition. He informed me that he had forgotten his marching shoes. Whaaa? But oh, hey, he could borrow shoes from an alternate who wouldn't be marching. What size? Oh, size 15. Son's size is 10.5.

You gotta be kidding me. No way was I gonna throw the state marching competition -- in my son's senior year, no less -- because he tripped over his own feet because he didn't have his own shoes.

The alarm rang at 5:30, which is highly uncivilized in my night-owl world. I showered, dressed, fought traffic, and made it there around 9am. Bradley's band was due to march at 10. I had no trouble finding him and made the Grand Shoe Switch. Turns out he had switched shoes with a third person who had taken the alternate's size 15 shoes. Too much for me to keep up with. I stowed the spare shoes in my trunk and hurried into the Alamodome to watch them march. I did stop long enough to buy a pretzel and a Dr. Pepper, since I hadn't gotten breakfast in my early morning fog.

The band was brilliant in the preliminaries, earning second place of all the bands. I drove the two hours home and collapsed since the finals were hours away.

Unfortunately, the finals did not treat them as kindly, and for the second year, they came in fifth place in state. Apparently several people in the crowd told band members they were robbed. When Bradley looked at the judges' marks online the next day, he found that one judge (we'll call him or her the "East German judge") had marked their school far lower than all the other judges.

Ah well. Life in the school of hard knocks.

Here is a pic of the band, or a lot of them. They don't all fit in one picture. Can you see the tenors in the back? They used to be called quads, but there are five drums. I've put those drums on, and they're HEAVY (about 40lb). I admire those kids for being able to carry them. Two of the three tenors this year are girls. You go, kids!





And here is Bradley doing what he loves to do. He is on the right of the three tenors, although there's a bass drum behind him.

Ah, but I promised to tell you about Wednesday too, huh? Well, Wednesday I slacked. I played a lot of World of Warcraft. And no one wants to hear about how I went to Serpentshrine Cavern for the first time and died repeatedly at the hand of a giant fish, or changed from mooncloth tailoring to shadowcloth tailoring, or farmed for materials for my new tailoring specialization.

I did mail out the jewelry to the Fall Y'all giveaway winners yesterday (except for the pink earrings -- haven't heard back from her yet, curiously), plus organized some other jewelry stuff (web site, blah blah blah). And I looked for a job, as always. And then I played the rest of the day away.

And now it's Thursday, and I'm overdue for a post. Not that anyone's reading, really. More that I feel like I should. =)

Happy Thursday, y'all!

So I Might Be a Little OCD...

I have a confession. About an obsession.

*looks around* I play World of Warcraft. And yes, I'm an actual female. Worse yet, I'm the guild master (or guild mom, as they call me). The GM.

For the non-techies, I'll explain: World of Warcraft, or WoW, is an MMORPG -- a massively multiplayer online role playing game. Or, as my hubby likes to joke, many men online role playing girls. When you play WoW, you have the option of joining a guild, which, if it's a good one, should be your online family -- the people you run around with, talk to, enjoy your time online with. Much like the blogging community, once you've found your niche. When you start a guild, you are the guild master, or GM. (There are also Game Masters, also GMs, that solve in-game problems, but we won't go there.)

So for the last couple of years, I have played WoW, and for the last year and a half, I have been GM of my very own guild. Like any large hierarchical volunteer group, it's had its ups and downs and its drama from time to time, but it's a cool bunch of people, and they're keepers. Many of them are the great co-workers mentioned in the post just prior to this one.

I've been reading lots of blogs lately. My favorite is BooMama's, but I've surfed around through lots of her readers and found some great stuff. I'm pretty sure the whole WoW thing makes me a raving lunatic in that crowd. Ah well. Sobeit.

As much fun as the game is, and as cool as the people are -- and these are real relationships with real people that develop online, much like in the blogging world -- I have to say that the ones that are the most bittersweet are with the guild's teenagers. We have a few that don't have the happiest home lives, and for those kids, I'm their online mom. I love them. I email them, text them, call them, play WoW with them. In one or two cases, it's possible I'm the only glimpse of God they've ever had. And they let me -- and sometimes ask me -- to pray for them.

You can too if you like. I won't name real names, but pray for my kiddo with the great sense of humor who's had health problems and is now suffering anxiety attacks. Pray for my kiddo who is so sweet and so complex that he teaches manners and dancing when he's not hating himself. Pray for my sweet girl who's so fierce and so independent -- living on her own for 2 years and only 17.

And now you know why I won't give up this game. The adults are great too, and I'm just as much in their lives, but those kids... those kids just slay me. I am theirs and they are mine. God gave them to me, and I'll stay with them as long as they'll have me.